I recently corrected the grammar of somebody who was writing “your welcome” whenever I thanked her for doing something over email. Instead of thanking me for pointing out her error and preventing her from looking like an uneducated idiot to a multitude of others, I’ve been treated poorly.
Maybe this comic will help her understand why she should be thanking me for the correction.
HT: Happy Place; Original Source: Girls with Slingshots
I get it as an occasional typo, but over and over again? Not a native speaker, or?
I’m pretty sure she’s a native speaker, but even if she is not a native speaker, she’s employed in a position where she should have learned pretty quickly the correct way to spell it (it would be like me not knowing how to spell “Bitte” correctly). The phrase was incorrectly typed three times before I pointed out the correct way to write it out.
Loved the cartoon and it drives me nuts too when people mix things like that up, BUT… Do you want to be right, or do you want to live in peace? I’ve had to learn to give up being right all the time for the sake of my marriage. (Confidential to B: I am still right ALMOST ALL OF THE TIME so there!) So you’re totally right, and I don’t have the details of how she reacted, but I can see where your friend is coming from (sorry!)
In this case, she’s not my friend — she’s a professional who deals with with a lot of people and should know proper grammar in this specific instance. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has seen her emails with the phrase “your welcome” and had that internal icky feeling…
Yeah, if I was screwing up that badly over and over, in a professional context, I would really want someone to correct me.
You should’ve said: You’re lucky someone is trying to correct your grammar, lady!
(pls. pardon any mistake in my grammar. I know I am bad at it 🙂 )
It’s a game of grammatical whack-a-mole, Adam. This person probably also confuses advice and advise, lose and loose, its and it’s… the list is long and the examples keep popping up all over the place. Do you correct them all? Only the ones that bug you the most? Or do you offer corrections only to those people you care enough about to even say something?
I’ve given up pointing out mistakes. It’s just not worth it.
I’ve got one that is posting on a website I routinely visit. While I am far from perfect regarding this subject, the person I’m talking about practically makes my eyes bleed anytime I read something they write.
They write like this:
“…i mit be able to kome ovur today…”
They spell every third or fourth word correctly. *ack* So far I’ve not blasted them for it, but I feel the time may be coming soon.
At least it sounds like you handled it correctly and not like the instructor I had at UWYO that insisted on writing a full-page tirade about how what I did was incorrect. He should have pointed out the error and moved on. It sounds like you did that.
Prashanth — 🙂 I’d be careful how I phrase it — your grammar was fine, but I suspect that some people might object to being called “lady”
ian in hamburg — it is a whack-a-mole headache, and I try to disengage as much as possible outside of the office, but when it hit the third time, I had to say something. I am sure her colleagues and co-workers will appreciate my correction, assuming she follows it, even if she did not.
Cynical Queer – You should go back and re-read my post on “always hard 2 red” — a post about a popular blog (that has gone quiet). Strangely enough it’s one of my all time most frequently visited posts. Side note to that post: I focused on always hard, but I also mentioned “a gay hockey kids life” — which was later proven to be a fake.
What was that about my welcome?
Your welcome present will be a big-ass hug!
Well…that would be an awesome welcome!